Anyone try the Road 5 tires? I have run PR4s for the past three seasons and have not been happy with the wear on the outter 1/3 of the tread. Some have called it "cupping" however I didn't consider it cupping, the trailing edge of the sipes has a tail.
My suspension was upgraded with the proper springs, RaceTech front and rear and revalved for my weight, gear etc. and played with preload adjustment to no avail. The fact the questionable wear is on the outsides of the tread, I believe suspension adjustment would be less impacting, as suspension really only reacts to lateral movement, except throttle/braking (not as frequent) when leaned over. The suspension does move in these scenarios too, but much less then when running down the highway/road in a straight line.
Any shared experiences with Road 5 Front and Rear are appreciated.
In actual fact, suspension has a big impact on the outsides of the tire tread, namely rebound damping. Consider a shock that compresses 3 inches with a weight of , say 1500 lbs (keep in mind that these are just random numbers to illustrate a point). If there is too much rebound damping, the shock kicks back slow. If there is not enough rebound damping, the shock will return or "kick back" rapidly. The shock still has to unload that 1500 lbs of force but the faster it does it the harder it pushes the tire into the road. If you are going straight down the road at a constant speed, there is very little issue. But, when you are leaned over, the tire is always trying to slip or "break loose". When that weight is trying to unload fast and hard, it causes the tread blocks to distort more and induces "pogoing", ultimately causing feathering, usually. Some tires are worse than others. I haven't had much luck with PR4's, but in my experiments with settings, rebound damping had a big effect on uneven wear, namely feathering. Also, tuning your rebound damping could make for a much better handling bike. DDuelin posted a video on setting the rebound damping
https://www.st-owners.com/forums/threads/st1300-setting-rear-shock-rebound-adj-video.109391/. Have a look at that video to see the dramatic difference it can make and try to picture being leaned over in a corner and what those differences could mean.
Assuming proper air pressure maintenance, what causes this feathering or cupping on the front tire and only the left side?
Hope it’s not the shock, it rebounds properly.
Guys here in LA are getting Michelin R5 now. I believe they dropped the “P” prefix and “GT” suffix as there’s only one version going forward
Cant say for sure, but I would definitely consider a front end alignment before anything else. Some say it is the slopes in the roads. Im not sure i can get my head around that, but I could be wrong
